


Tommy's Birthdays

by hotcookinmama



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6266128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotcookinmama/pseuds/hotcookinmama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having your best friend’s birthday take you by surprise was hard enough when he was alive. Getting blindsided by that date after he was gone was even worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tommy's Birthdays

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I LOVED writing Small Things & Big Plans, I swore I wasn't going to write anymore until I got my taxes done. Then two mornings in one week, I woke up with lines from this little story. Can't ignore that. It's a quick one-shot. Hope you like it.

February 1st.

Oliver hated it each year. No one ever understood how hard it was. No one ever remembered except Laurel, and now she was gone too. 

The first year was the hardest. 

Even when they were younger, Tommy's birthday always snuck up on him. January was a time to recover from the holidays. Next thing Oliver knew, it was the first of February, and they were celebrating Tommy's birthday. More than once, Oliver had to come up with a last-minute present. When your best friend is the son of a billionaire and can get whatever he wants, coming up with best-friend-quality gifts was a challenge. 

For Tommy's 18th birthday, Oliver gave him a "I'm with stupid" t-shirt. They both got a good laugh, and Tommy wore it at his party that night. Oliver never saw it again. Tommy probably threw it away after puking all over it at the party. Malcolm had bought multiple kegs for Tommy's party. Apparently thinking a bunch of drunk 17 and 18 year olds was a good way to celebrate his son's coming of age. 

For Tommy's 19th birthday, Oliver hired a high-class hooker. Well, it was several of them actually. That was a night of debauchery that set the standard over the years. They both learned way more about sexuality from those ladies than they ever had from high-school girls and debutants. 

After heading to separate colleges, they missed a few birthdays together. Oliver never remembered to send a gift those years, but he always called. They would spend time laughing and catching up with each other's lives. 

Tommy threw himself a giant bash for his birthday a few months before Oliver left on the Gambit. Once things started getting really roudy, Laurel asked to leave. Oliver wanted to stay "for Tommy's sake." Laurel said Tommy was capable of enjoying the topless coeds without Oliver. Oliver called her a cab, and he stayed to have fun without an uptight Laurel. She didn't speak to him for a week. 

Tommy's last birthday on this side of the veil was an entirely different affair. Tommy & Laurel invited Oliver to bring a guest for a quiet dinner party at Laurel's place. Oliver had invited McKenna. Although Tommy said it was his best birthday in a very long time because he had his best friend back, Oliver knew it was also because of Tommy's deepening relationship with Laurel. Even after Malcolm arrived and put a damper on Tommy's mood, they still enjoyed their dinner and had a lovely evening. After the disastrous double date with Helena, Oliver feared he'd never be able to introduce any of his future dates to Tommy and Laurel. Apparently dating a level-headed cop was a different experience than dating a vengeance-seeking mob daughter. 

The next year was night-and-day different. Tommy was gone. Laurel was barely speaking to Oliver and spiraling into her own pool of self pity. In the year between Tommy’s last living birthday and the next, much more painful one, Oliver had discovered that new friendships were possible. He began to develop friendships, very different friendships, with Diggle and Felicity. Those were the friendships born from a shared mission, a partnership. They weren’t the friendships of a carefree youth. Oliver would never have that again. 

Between bringing Roy into the fold, hiding from Laurel that Sara was alive and worrying about mirakuru being in Starling, Oliver’s January that year had plenty of distractions. When the calendar turned to February 1st, it hit Oliver hard. Having your best friend’s birthday take you by surprise was hard enough when he was alive. Getting blindsided by that date after he was gone was even worse. 

He was in his office at Queen Consolidated when he noticed the date. It felt like a sucker punch. After getting his breath back a minute later, he chided himself. It's just a date. Tommy is no more dead today than he was yesterday. Tomorrow will be the same. He tried to convince himself of that repeatedly throughout the morning. It failed. Today was different. Today was a day he could allow himself to wallow in the sadness and guilt of losing his childhood friend. 

He knew that Felicity and Diggle noticed his sullen mood, but he didn’t care. This wasn’t a day for them. He left work early and told them he'd see them at the foundry later that evening. He wasn’t fit to be in an office that day. He drove around for a couple hours, passing the old Merlyn mansion and the high-end prep school they had both attended.

He saw a couple groups of teens goofing off in front of the school and wondered what kinds of unforeseen pain their life had in store. He never would have suspected the horrors he had waiting for him when he was their age. Would any of them have to see their best friend die in front of them? Would they have to second guess every decision thinking if just one of them had been different maybe their friend would be alive? 

Lost in his thoughts, Oliver found himself at the former Merlyn Global headquarters. New ownership and a name change didn’t change the fact that this was where he had fought Malcolm. This is where he had watched a huge chunk of his city crumble into pieces. He easily gained access to the roof again and stood there remembering that night. It had been less than a year since the Undertaking and the city’s scars were still quite obvious. Some of the Glades had been rebuilt but other parts were vacant lots or, even worse, piles of rubble. When the despair crept in, he had to remind himself that it would have been a lot worse if Felicity and Lance hadn’t taken out one of the earthquake machines. Sure, they saved a lot of people that night, but they lost so many as well. 

Tommy’s birthday should be a day of parties, drinks and laughs… lots of laughs. Malcolm took that. He took all of that. That year, Tommy’s first birthday since the Undertaking, Oliver's one comfort was that Malcolm was dead. 

The next year he didn’t have that comfort. He didn’t have any comforts. He was still recovering from his fall at the hands of Ra’s al Ghul. Maseo rescued him and Tatsu nursed him back to health but it was his love for Felicity that truly saved him. He would have died on that mountain if it wasn’t for his love of her. On the long road to return to Starling, the thought of her was his only bright spot. The rest of his time was spent ruminating about possible ways to keep Thea safe from Ra’s. He kept coming back to Tatsu’s words: to defeat this man, you must think like him, be like him. Only the student has hope of defeating the master. She thought that learning from Maseo was Oliver’s only hope, but Oliver knew there was another student of Ra’s as well. As much as it turned his stomach, he couldn’t see any alternative. His only hope to defeat Ra’s and keep Thea safe was to partner with another student of Ra’s: Malcolm Merlyn.

While stopping at a roadside diner, he looked up at the TV news in the corner and saw the date. Was it really February 1st again? What the hell was he doing? How could he even be thinking of asking for Malcolm’s help. If it weren’t for Malcolm, Tommy would still be alive. On a day that Oliver and Tommy should be celebrating together, Oliver was actually considering working with Tommy’s killer. How screwed up was that?

It reminded Oliver of the time when he returned to Starling City and had to fool his mother — and everyone else — that he had no business being in the family business. He showed up a little tipsy — and appearing a lot more drunk than he actually was — to the dedication ceremony for the Applied Sciences building being named after his father. At his father’s grave later, he asked the elder Queen's forgiveness. Sometimes to honor your wishes... I have to dishonor your memory. 

Now to defeat Ra’s, he would have to do the same. He knew that partnering with Malcolm would dishonor Tommy’s memory. Tatsu said Oliver would have to sacrifice that which is most precious. To save Thea from Ra’s, he would have to work with Malcolm, and in the process dishonor Tommy and probably lose Felicity. He suspected she would never agree to this plan. He was right.

So, yeah, February 1st sucked again that year.

The next year was a little better. Being with Felicity made everything, even the darkest memories, a little better. He was so focused on helping her adapt to the wheelchair that he didn’t have time to wallow. Seeing February 1st on the calendar still stung, but it was a pain he could live with. The beautiful blonde at his side had courage to not despair when her life was turned upside down. He could push pass the pain of missing Tommy. 

The next year was hard again. That year Oliver was alone in his rememberence of his best friend's birthday. Laurel was gone now too. All of his childhood friends were now gone. The only person who Oliver knew from his childhood days was Thea, and she was so very different now. He missed both Tommy and Laurel so desperately that year. At least they were together in death now. Small comfort. Very small comfort. Oh, how he wished that he and Felicity could have hung out with Tommy and Laurel as couples. Talk about a different experience from that double date with Helena! Tommy and Felicity would have gotten along famously. He even allowed himself a few daydreams of family vacations with the four of them and their kids. That would have been glorious. 

Each year after that, February 1st got easier and easier. The pain was there, but it became muted. Felicity’s presence made the burden lighter. 

On the seventh year of remembering Tommy’s birthday without him, everything changed. That February 1st was the day that he and Felicity sat in the bathroom waiting for a timer. When the home test showed the good news, Oliver knew instantly that February 1st would never again be a day of pain. He knew it would be weeks before they could learn the sex of the baby, but he already had a boy's name picked out: Thomas Robert Queen.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are gold to me. Thanks!


End file.
